State efforts to shield voter data from President Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission passed its first committee hurdle Tuesday.
Introduced by Senator Henry Stern (D-Canoga Park), the senate resolution asks other states to join California in not sharing election data with the president’s commission, expressing concerns with its legality.
“On its face, the President’s Election Integrity Commission is nothing but a tax-payer funded attempt to fuel misguided conspiracy theories,” Stern said when introducing the resolution. “This measure is a rallying cry for other states to join a growing coalition of election officials, Attorneys General and civil rights watchdog groups in protecting the sanctity of electoral data by not yielding to the demands of this fraudulent commission.”
Senator Stern serves as the Chair of the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments, the committee who pushed the resolution through on Tuesday.
While Stern’s Senate Joint Resolution 11 was the first of its kind, other state officials have expressed concern with the commission, which was introduced in May.
Refusing to comply, Secretary of State Alex Padilla said California will not provide voter data to the commission, saying it is “unprecedented and unsecure.”
“The President’s Election Commission is a waste of taxpayer money, created to justify his lies about millions of illegal votes and to advance measures to suppress voting rights,” Padilla said in a statement.
Elected officials, representatives and voting rights advocates have partnered in the past to make voting convenient and without risking voters’ security, according to Board Chair at California Common Cause Chair Jonathan Stein.
“The federal government should be studying California’s success instead of spending taxpayer time and money on a poorly-run commission that appears to have pre-judged the matter it is studying,” Stein said in a statement.
Senate Joint Resolution 11 will now go to the Senate floor for a vote. It has until the Sept. 15 legislative deadline to pass through both the Senate and Assembly.
